A Coffin Is Not a Body

Four months of drought have emptied Nethermill Water, and the village drowned in 1965 has risen out of the mud — chapel, school, and the lane where the Wheatley farm once stood. Deborah, a radio documentary maker who has spent twenty-five years not being in rooms with her family, is summoned back by her dying grandmother, who refuses to sell the dam until someone admits what happened the night seven-year-old Lottie went into the flood channel. Then the rain comes, and a number appears in chalk.